a VISITOR!!!

Unity Moravian Church
Moravians are relatively common in this area because the town was first settled by a group of wayward ones. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, spent a lot of time with the Moravians, and the two denominations are supposed to be fairly similar. Plus, the Moravians make great cookies, and if I became a Moravian, then I too would make great cookies.

Cookies or not, I had essentially written this church off by the end of the service. There was a lot of ritual in the service, much more than to my taste. I'm fine with a little bit of ritual in my church routine, in fact, some ritual I find comforting. But too much and worship becomes stale and rehearsed. You can stand up, sit down, and read the bold-faced words on autopilot; too much of that and nothing means anything. And I don't know if this is church-specific or not, but this particular Moravian church liked its rituals. Lots of singing and reading prayers, plus a five-page litany from the hymnal. This was just a regular Sunday, mind you, not even Easter or Communion Sunday. I shudder to think of what the Christmas or Good Friday service must be like.

However, the members of Unity Moravian Church are either very, very friendly or just hard up for new members. A lady came up to me, introduced herself, and then introduced me to someone else, saying, "This is Sandra! She's a VISITOR!!!" The next person talked to me a while, then introduced me to another person, saying "This is Sandra! She just moved here from Boone! She's a VISITOR!!!" Finally, after going through another chained introduction or two, I was introduced to the pastor by another of my new aquaintances, who said, "This is Sandra! She just moved here from Boone! She recently graduated from Appalachian! She writes software! SHE'S A VISITOR!!!" I was concerned for the health of these people, as the excitement of having a visitor (!!!) seemed to be almost too much for them. In any case, I was charmed (and a little frightened) by their enthusiasm. But I kept thinking about that five-page litany, and in the end, I wanted to look around some more. Five pages of responsive reading? No cookies are that good.

not enough handbells.

I'm looking for a church, both because I want to meet new people and because I feel guilty when I don't go. And while I know this isn't really why God wants you to go to church, I think He'll agree that'll it'll do until you come up with a better reason.

It's hard to choose a church, because you're mostly judging on things that ultimately aren't important. You may choose this church because it has a good handbell program, but if it turns out handbells don't equal spiritual growth in this church, then you may have made a poor choice. Then again, I tend to think you could feasibly get the same spiritual nourishment out of your experience at any church; you just may have to work harder at places without handbell choirs. In any church experience, you only get out what you put in.

So I have to figure out what's important to me in a church. I tend toward United Methodist churches, because I grew up in one. I joined the UMC when I was twelve, and by the time I was eighteen, I had begun to pay attention what denominations actually meant. Luckily, it turned out that I still liked the Methodists. That could've been because of the mass brain-washing they did to me over eighteen years, but if so, they at least had the courtesy to brain-wash me into being happy about it.

I like interesting, thought-provoking sermons that aren't just retelling the same Bible stories over and over. I want to hear something I haven't heard in 20 years of sermons. I would like for there to be other people my age and marital status. I like pot lucks with lots of deviled eggs. I like for there to be programs going on, even if they're not ones I'm necessarily interested in; I want the church to be active. I like smaller churches. I like it when everybody seems to know everybody. I liked anonymity in my college classes, but not in my church. I honestly feel like a sense of a tightly-knit, yet open to new people church family is the most important thing to me. I want a church family that is warm and friendly. I can sacrifice on all the other things if I go in there every Sunday and someone is just thrilled to see me.

So I've been church-hopping. It's a hard thing to do, to just show up somewhere where you don't know anyone. Then you have to try to figure out the order of service, the songs they sing, and Lord help you if they sing the Doxology to a different tune. And you're supposed to fill in the attendance pad. I always do, but I never tell them my address or phone number. I'll pick a church without the assistance of a marketing team, thank you very much. I do mark down that I'm a visitor and that I'm new to the area, just so they know if they don't see my name again, they need to work on something. Chances are, they just didn't have enough handbells.

but with less issues.

Hi there, I'm Brian. Don't worry, I'm not here to harass you, I'm just looking for non-violent people. Are you a violent person?

Um, no. Is he a violent person? Why is he on my porch?

Well, good. They're just sending us all out here to make us work on our people skills, make sure we keep eye contact and don't spit all over people. Have I soaked you yet?

Um, no. Why is he here? Why is he here? Why is he here?

Then I'm doing a good job. You know, there are six hundred of us all over the state of North Carolina running around, and right now, I've got the most points. I'm trying to win so I can open up a Cajun restaurant. I'm from New Orleans.

Wow, that's mighty ambitious of you. I hate Cajun food. Why is he here?

Yes it is, and I'm going to need your help. Plus, if I win, they're going to send me to Cancun. Ever been to Cancun?

No.

Oh, well, I'm going to need a dancing partner...

...

...unless you have a husband or a boyfriend already.

I do have a boyfriend. He's six-nine, and he plays for the Redskins, except now he's on probation because he killed a man with his bare hands.

Ah, that's too bad, but I don't wanna get in trouble now.

(uncomfortable laughter) Go away. Why is he here?

See, the more magazines I sell...

Ah.

...the more points I get. Here's a list of my magazines. Now I'm not asking you to buy twenty subscriptions, just ten!

(forced laughter) You obviously don't know me very well, then.

Nah, that's just a little joke there. But seriously, all you gotta do is pick these out and sign a form for me, and the magazines come right to your door. It's cheap and easy, like my ex-girlfriend, but with less issues.

That's not very nice. Not to mention really creepy and weird.

Ah, well, it was just a rough situation there, you know? She had this baby and it died, and then two weeks later she broke up with me because she didn't want a committment. After two years together! Can you believe that?

...

Then, well, I just decided I had to get out of there, so I started travelling around the country, just get away from there. And now I'm here!

Yes, you are. Oh, good.

So, here are the magazines. Now, I'm not points-greedy, I'm just points-needy. And you know what? You can even send these magazines as a gift to a charity. I had a guy in the next building over send a subscription of Maxim out to our troops. And you know what the best part about that is?

What? That you'll leave?

It's tax deductible.

That is good. That is the first sensible thing you have said to me.

Now, what do you do for a living?

I write software. Where is he going with this?

Wow! Good for you!

Thanks. Funny how those college degrees keep you from selling magazines door-to-door.

How much do you make?

That's really none of your business. You've got to be kidding me.

Ah, well, I like to ask. I really like to ask cops, because I make more than they do. Cops are so full of themselves, and it's funny that I make more than they do.

Plus you don't get shot at. Although, if I had a gun right now...

Well, there was this one time that I did get shot.

That's no good. This is ridiculous.

Ah, well, it happens. So what can I put you down for?

I really don't need any magazines, thank you. Go away, go away, go away.

No one needs magazines.

Okay, I don't want any magazines. Why did I tell him that I have a good-paying job?

No one wants magazines...

What the heck kind of pitch is this?

...but you can still do your part and send some as a gift, you know.

I'm sorry. I'd like to send a subscription of Playboy to the local children's home and a subscription of Cat Fancy to our troops, please.

Do you mind me asking why?

I'm sorry, I'm just not interested. Because you're creepy. Because your magazines are overpriced. Because you're bothering me. Because no one needs or wants magazines.

Well, bye then.

(locks door)

look at me.

So, Alexandra Zuck died a few weeks ago.

Depending on how old or how up on trivia you are, you may not know who Alexandra Zuck is. I know who she is, because my name is Sandra, and for all the years of my life, people have been calling me by Alexandra Zuck's pseudonym.

Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee...

If your name is Sandra, you already knew all about Sandra Dee. If your first name is Sandra and your last name starts with a D, then I'm very, very sorry. I feel your pain. It's not even Sandra Dee's fault for branding all future Sandras. It is the fault of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, who wrote "Grease," and the fault of Stockard Channing, who sang "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" in the movie. I even blame Olivia Newton-John a little bit. Thanks to them, I'm forever associated with being "lousy with virginity."

People began calling me "Sandra Dee" in middle school, probably coinciding with my classmates realizing what "virginity" meant. Since then, I've heard all sorts of variations. Sometimes it's "Sandra Dee," sometimes "Sandra G." (my last initial), and I even had a guy who called me "Miss Dee" for a while, and I could never figure out why he was calling me "Misty."

The trouble with this nickname is that people independently come up with it themselves. It's not like you know a specific group of people who call you "Boo-Squawky" or that you're known as "Buggy" around the office. People who have never before heard me called "Sandra Dee" by others call me that. It flows, they like it, and they are impressed with their own ingenuity.

Okay, I'm done griping. I really don't mind, and to be honest, I kinda like it. Having a nickname, even a really awful one, which Sandra Dee is not, is generally a sign of affection of others for you (unless it's "Dummy" or something like that). And there are worse things to be associated with than wholesomeness. So I don't really blame Alexandra Zuck for anything. There are worse things to be called than Sandra Dee.

Like Alexandra Zuck.

it's fun to be good.

Thing 1: Zach played golf on his lunch break.
Zach, the guy in the office diagonally from me, plays a lot of dang golf. He plays every day there is no precipitation and the temperature is above 40 degrees. When he doesn't play outside, he practices his swing technique in his apartment with the aid of a pair of giant mirrors he bought at Lowe's expressly for that purpose. Whatever Zach does, he is passionate about it, and he is always trying to improve himself. He says he plays to be good. I asked him if he ever played anything because it was fun. He said that being good was fun. Part of me wishes that I were like this; the rest of me thinks it would be awfully inconvenient.

Thing 2: The ACC men's basketball tournament started today.
Sure wish I could get the games with my TV and rabbit ears setup. Setting the score page on ESPN.com to automatic refresh every 30 seconds is just not the same. Tomorrow we are having an office lunch, the time of which is magically coinciding with the tipoff of the Carolina game. You probably think it is coincidental, since the game starts at noon. Not so. Every office lunch I've been to in the past two months has always started at 11:30. We are true North Carolinians.

Thing 3: I had deviled eggs with my lunch today.
I made them myself last night without any adult supervision. The rest of my lunch was also homemade, and none of it involved the letters P, B, and J. Every day, I become a little bit more marriage material.

ten-cent limes.

Chris happened to have a Winn-Dixie sales paper on his desk. I honestly don't hang out with Chris all that much, except for the fact that he is Rob's officemate, and I try to talk to Chris so it's not like I'm just coming to see Rob all the time. But anyway, Winn-Dixie was having this phenomenal produce sale. Ten cent limes! Ten cent kiwis! Ten cent baking potatoes! Plus, ten cent Granny Smith apples and bananas, as well as a big selection of twenty cent apples. Chris, Rob, and I fantasied about the possibilities of such a veritable menagerie of produce-tastic enjoyment. Actually, I fantasied about it, and Chris and Rob laughed at me.

Here's the thing: there is only one Winn-Dixie in the Winston-Salem area, and it's about fifteen miles from my house, down Highway 52 in the suburb of Midway. Driving that far to get ten cent limes would probably offset what I would be saving off the cost of my ten cent limes (regularly 33 cents apiece). Plus, there was the fact that I don't ever use limes. Kiwis, potatoes, apples, and bananas, maybe.

Rob tried to talk me into going and picking up some limes for him. He wanted me to go, not because he needed limes, but because he would be amused at the thought of me driving 13.82 miles (according to MapQuest) for some ten cent limes. Really, the idea was ridiculous.

Of course, I went.

There's not much in Midway. Besides boasting the area's only Winn-Dixie, there was a Dollar General, a local pizza place ("Presto Pizza"), a nail salon ("Art Nails"), and a gas station or two. That's it, nothing else to justify a trip to get ten cent limes. I bought a dollar's worth of limes for Rob and didn't accept reimbursement, making them especially cheap for him. Plus, I got some other fruits and veggies for me, though nothing I couldn't have gotten at the Food Lion close to my house for more than ten cents apiece. Still, I'm glad I went, because it's silly and ridiculous, and because I am a grown-up, I can do all the silly and ridiculous things that I want to do.

Actually, I am just that hard-up for something to write about these days.

blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch.

I always stop to check my mailbox when I get home from work. My mailbox is one in a pair of clusters in a tiny building attached to the apartment building next to mine. From my mailbox, I can see my front door. And so one day last week, I could see the little red and white pieces of paper as they stuck in my screen door from my mailbox. How exciting!

Not really. The red piece of paper was from my rental office, saying I needed to come see them ASAP regarding March's rent check. Eh, whatever. The white piece of paper was a piece of wide-ruled notebook paper folded in half twice. At the top of the page it said, "Blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch." And that was it.

No, it wasn't a very odd sexual predator. It wasn't even your run-of-the-mill sexual predator. The sentence fragment in question is a song lyric that I know well, from They Might Be Giants' "Birdhouse in Your Soul." You would probably say the fact that a person who knows such a bizarre little snippet says something about the person who left the note. You would probably also say the fact that I recognized it immediately says something about me.

The best thing about the mystery of the weird note was that there were multiple suspects. If it says something about me that I know someone who would leave a note saying "Blue canary in the outlet by the lightswitch" in my door, what does it say that I know multiple someones who would do it? What if I had, in fact, two suspects in mind, and that I called the wrong one first because of geographical evidence?

Josh very nicely said it wasn't he who left the note, very nicely humored me and said it did sound like something he would do, then probably hung up the phone laughing at me. First suspect eliminated, I called the second, my brother, Sid. He laughed at me, too, because I called the wrong guy first. Then we talked a minute, and hung up. Then I laughed at me, because it was all very ridiculous.

BFFAABYMBFOC*

Amy and I were best friends in high school. She was slightly on the weird side of normal, and maybe I was on the normal side of weird. (I say maybe because I don't really like to declare myself as "weird." I don't like to declare myself as anything. I'm Sandra, and if you don't know what that means, then you're not paying attention. But this is another issue.)

My relationship with Amy was peppered with lots of in-jokes, as all my best relationships are. Sometimes I get my in-jokes mixed up and I make them with the wrong friend. I made a tea kettle roar at my friend Josh this weekend and received a blank stare. I said, "If you were Amy, you would have thought that was hilarious." With Amy and I, even having in-jokes was an in-joke, along with "John's Bluff," cookin' beans, and making tea kettles roar.

But the real focus of this aside-riddled entry is BFFAA, one of our most oft-used in-jokes which stands for "Best Friends Forever And Always." It's something that elementary school girls sign at the bottoms of letters to their bosom companions. But Amy and I didn't sign "BFFAA." We signed things like "BFFAABYLWIMATKR"** or "BFFAAETYWTTLWIMATKR"***. We made up new ones every time, and put a little star at the end which matched up to the footnote where we would explain what all those letters meant. The challenge was to guess what the letters stood for. Mostly, the statements were so ridiculous that we could never get the whole thing. But sometimes, we could. Whether that's a testament to how close we were, how similar we were, or just how sad we were, I don't know.

Amy and I still talk quite a bit, mostly on the internet. When I lived in Boone, we'd go weeks without seeing each other until we happened to both be bored on the same night, and then we'd get together. We say we are "friends of convenience" now, and though it may seem kinda sad, it works for us. But we'll send cards sometimes, and we always sign off with our version of BFFAA. And it still makes us laugh to do it, even though it's been years since we came up with it, just like all our little in-jokes, like "John's bluff," cookin' beans, and making tea kettles roar.


*Best Friends Forever And Always Because You're My Best Friend Of Convenience

**Best Friends Forever And Always Because You Laugh When I Make A Tea Kettle Roar

***Best Friends Forever And Always Even Though You Weren't There To Laugh When I Made A Tea Kettle Roar

best in the world.

Thing 1: This morning, traffic was rotten.
Usually there's a bottleneck where Business 40 begins from the merging of 421 and the cars coming off of I-40. Today, the traffic was backed up a whole exit away from that, which I took as a bad sign. However, it was because of a wreck. None of the lanes were blocked, but there was a rubber-necking delay, as there was a jeep, a sedan, and a cop car in the median. I didn't slow down enough to really assess the situation, but I did see that the license plate of the jeep read "FECK!" I can only assume this is a euphemism for some other word that the DMV won't let you put on your license plate, and I thought it oddly appropriate for this jeep sitting in the median of the highway after being in a wreck. FECK! indeed.

Thing 2: Josh said he could never marry a North Carolina girl.
This is Josh that I work with, not to be confused with any other Josh in my life. Josh is from California, and frankly, I'm not sure what's wrong with him. NC girls are, like, the best, even when they do pepper their sentences with "like." We're so nice, and we talk purty. He seems to think we're unenlightened as a group. Most of the NC girls he knows are from his studies at Wake Forest. He seems to think there is something wrong in general with a group of people who feel no desire to move to another state. I feel this is a recommendation for that state. Anyway, the conversation left me feeling offended and bummed that even someone who has lived here a couple years still thinks we're all backwoods hicks. I'd like to throw some sweet tea at
him.

Thing 3: I discovered findyourspot.com
It's a survey. You take it, and it tells you where to live. It doesn't include every city in the country, but it does include some pretty obscure ones (Boone, for instance). I think they have to achieve some sort of standard to be a recommended city. Winston-Salem does not achieve this standard, as it's not on the list. Anyway, I took the quiz, and my top recommendation was Hickory, NC (about half an hour from where I grew up). I also got recommendations for places like Chattanooga and Tulsa, and a couple of places in South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. Most of my cities were NC cities, clearly because they are the best ever, no matter what those silly boys in California think.

everything i need to know, i learned somewhere other than college.

One of the things that frustrated me as I was looking for a job for after college was the fact that I was about to receive two degrees, and I still didn't seem to know enough. Most of the job listings I found, I didn't meet the qualifications. Though I had a sheet of paper that said I spent four years learning, I apparently didn't learn the right things. There's a reason there aren't any posters that say "Everything I need to learn, I learned in college." (Actually, there probably are those posters, but they all have statements about kegs or going out in public in your pajamas.)

I shouldn't have been upset, as I had been warned. When I was in the eighth grade, my algebra teacher told me that college is only about getting a degree that proves to companies that you can have the ability to learn. He told me you didn't learn anything in college that actually prepares you for a job, that your employer will train you when you get there. I did not believe him. What a ridiculous story! Not learn anything in four whole years? That's craziness.

Okay, so I believe him now.

This isn't such a terrible thing as long as you can find a place that's willing to hire someone straight from school and train them. It's accepted practice. Apparently, it wasn't just me that didn't learn the right things, it was everyone. So that's why I have a job now, and that's why I'm learning a lot of things that were never even mentioned in all those computer science classes I took. My first couple of weeks, the guy who was training me would ask, "So, have you ever worked with this? Yeah, I hadn't either before I came here." That always made me feel better, because he had a Master's Degree, so he went through six years of school not learning anything.

It's not that I thought learning would be over as soon as I finished my last class. I believed in continued learning, but I believed it in that learn-something-new-everyday, cliche kind of way. No, I'm learning whole new languages and programs and processes. And don't even get me started on all the office politics I'm learning about.

It gets worse - I actually have to take tests. My company wants its programmers to be certified in a language I had no exposure to before I came here. I spend my free time reading textbooks and taking notes for the test I have to take. It's like school all over again, except for the minor detail that I get a certificate and a Microsoft pin if I actually pass the test. That never happened in college.

But it's not so bad. I do like computer science, so learning about it is not torture. And the new language is very similar to one that I already know, because I learned it...in college.

the advent of the three things.

I've been struggling to write lately. You've probably noticed. If not, call my mother, and she'll tell you about it. I'm not too worried about it because I'm a strong believer in ebb and flow, so if the writing isn't coming as easily as it once was, someday it'll be easy again. But until then, I must power through, because it is important to me that I keep writing, whether it's easy or not.

And so I announce the advent of Three Things. A guy at work plays this game at the dinner table with his family. Everyone gets three turns to tell something that happened that day. So that's my new game. All I have to do is tell you three things that happened, and I am free to elaborate as much or as little as I want. I may elaborate so much that one of the Things becomes an entry by itself. Or I may not feel like going into detail and a Thing may be just one sentence long. I haven't yet decided if I'm going to limit myself to just Things that happened that specific day, mostly because I write at different times of the day, and if I'm writing in the morning (not at work!), then much may not have happened yet.

I like this idea very much. Not only because it take some pressure off of me to produce a lot of writing, but also because there are often things that I would write about, except I don't really have enough for a whole entry. Now I don't have to. I can tell you about the funny incident, even if it does only take up two sentences.

And since this entry would suck if it stopped here, here are the first Three Things.

Thing 1: I bought Girl Scout cookies from my coworkers.
There were two cookie order forms in the break room last month, and so I ordered a box of cookies from each of the two daughters of two coworkers. This morning, there was a box of Iced Berry Pinatas (with real strawberries) on my desk. I'm expecting a box of Thin Mints (with no strawberries, real or otherwise) as well. I'm very excited about my cookies, despite the fact that I'm a little bitter that I never had parents who would take my various sales to work and peddle for me. But in any case, I ordered cookies partly because buying cookies from a coworker's daughter seemed like an adult thing to do. I am a grown-up, and I have coworkers old enough to have children. Plus, I like cookies.

Thing 2: The guy who sells newspapers at the corner of Stratford Road and the off-ramp of Silas Creek Parkway South wore an umbrella hat this morning.
You know, those little head attachments with mini multi-colored umbrellas on top? Like this. I've seen him wear it before, when it was raining or rain was in the forecast. It wasn't raining this morning, but it had been and the clouds remained dark. Anyway, the umbrella hat makes me like this guy even more and on the mornings when I'm feeling frisky, I wave at him. A couple mornings last week, he wasn't there, and I was getting worried that he might be sick or that he had been fired. But he's back now, and all is right with the world.

Thing 3: I used expensive conditioner this morning.
I bought it last night, because it was on sale. Also because I always wanted to know whether expensive hair products really worked better. Usually I get the dollar or two-dollar brand (which smells nicer than the one-dollar brand). This stuff is the four-dollar brand, very pricey. My hair is awfully soft and nice-smelling this morning, but I don't know about twice as soft and twice as nice-smelling as it usually is. The true test is volume, because I have limp noodle hair (the professionals call it ultra-fine, which, as I was disappointed to find out, is not really a compliment). By the end of the day, I'm sure it will be just as flat as usual, and I'll be able to go back to buying cheap products, confident that the expensive brands are no better.

See? That was easy.

what would bruce do?

We all hate her. Despite the fact that many of us grew up with parents who told us it was not nice to hate, we all hate her without remorse.

Usually computer projects are not referred to with a gender-specific pronoun, except maybe in those languages that assign gender to everything. But we speak English at my company. We call the project a her because the project name is actually a girl's name. So if you happen into our doors to hear us talking disparagingly about Sheila, don't feel bad for the poor girl. If you worked with her, you'd say all those words, too.

Sheila is the name of the company that we are building the project for. Some man probably named it for his wife in a misguided tribute. If it were me, I wouldn't want a company that makes truck parts named after me. Maybe a company that makes really great tea, or vintage tee-shirts, or unique clocks. Truck parts? I'll pass.

In any case, we hate her. We are releasing a new version of Sheila tomorrow, or we are supposed to. The program doesn't work. The install doesn't work. It is all Sheila's fault. So the half a dozen of us who are assigned to her sit at our workstations and plug away and making the stupid hussy work stopping only to call someone else on the team and complain about what a dumb broad Sheila really is. We call her all sorts of names reserved for females, just as if she were some very lazy and uncooperative girl that we all happen to know.

I feel that it is also the fault of the guy who named his company that makes truck parts after his wife. If he had named it after himself or maybe a best friend, we would not be having these problems. These things would never happen to a Bruce. Would a Bruce make everyone beat their heads against their desks? Would Bruce mess up all the other projects when he was installed? No, of course not. Not Bruce. He'd never do something like that.

detail-oriented.

Mike is training me. He's not in charge of training me, and he doesn't even do the same work that I'm being trained to do. Mike is a tester, and I'm the new Build Master (we considered calling me the Build Mistress, but that sounds like I'm just sleeping with the Build behind the Build's wife's back). I do work with Mike, because when I make a build, it has to be tested, and sometimes Mike is the one that tests it.

So he isn't training me to make builds. He's training me to make builds his way. Mike likes his builds to be burned to a CD. Yesterday, I finished a build for Mike that fixed a couple problems the previous one had. I told him that I finished it, and I put it up on the public company hard drive where he would be able to get it. This morning, Mike came in and asked if I had fixed the problem. I was confused, because I thought I had told him I fixed it. Then he said, "Well, I didn't know if you did, since I didn't get a disc." Ah. Point taken.

Technically, that was my fault. I knew he likes to have a disc. He likes to have them labelled. He likes to follow SOP (standard operating procedures). The first disc I ever made for Mike was sometime last week, and I didn't label it. The guy who is actually training me, the previous Build Master, didn't tell me to. So Mike trotted back to my office and asked me to label it. Mike could have easily labelled the thing himself. He knew what it would say. But I needed to be trained to do it. It's SOP. So I labelled it, and I've labelled the two discs I've given to Mike since then. I even went to the office manager and specifically asked for a Sharpie so that I could label Mike's discs. It's green.

Two days ago, I revised a build for Mike. Builds are supposed to restart the computer when they fiddle with the registry, more as a precaution than anything else. The previous versions of this build did not restart, though they did change the registry. I fixed it so it did restart, because that's SOP. Mike came to my office and asked why this build restarted when the others did not. I told him it was because the build changed the registry, and the others should have done that. Mike said, "Oh, good, so we're going to follow SOP?" It was really hard not to laugh.

I could be irritated. I'm not. I'm the new guy here, and since all this stuff is new to me, I don't mind learning it this way if it's what keeps people happy. Besides, being anal-retentive (or "detail-oriented," as we call it) is what makes a lot of computer scientists good at what they do, even if it sometimes makes them a little obnoxious in social situations. So I'll burn the disc, and I'll label it with my green Sharpie. And I'll follow SOP, but not for Mike. That just makes good sense.

the site of somebody's family dinners.

My kitchen table is old. It's old and dirty and grimy. It wobbles when it stands up at all, which hasn't been very often lately, considering two of the four legs haven't been attached. Somehow when I was living in downtown Boone, one of the legs decided not to hang on to the table anymore. I blame Krystal, mostly because she was the only one who knew it was even broken for months. The leg was just wedged under the table, and somehow it stayed up.

But all that aside, I love that table. It's over 50 years old, one of those kitschy dinette sets everyone used to have. I bought it at a yard sale with six matching chairs for $15. The guy who used to own it said it had been in his grandmother's kitchen since the 50s. And yeah, it showed its age, but, man, that table was cool.

For the entire month that I've lived in Lewisville, my table has been lying on its side against the kitchen wall, as much out of the way as possible. My family tried to get me to throw it out when we were moving it. It's true that it's given me at least $15 worth of service and that it's barely functional. During the move, another leg came loose. But I couldn't bear to let this table go. This table has a history! Family dinners were held there. Not my family, but somebody's family!

I decided to fix it. This was kind of a problem. I couldn't just screw the legs back on because the table top is made of that old table material that you only find anymore in places called Mel's or The Silver Dollar Diner or Eats. The underside was very old corkboard, reduced with age until it looked more like cardboard. The old screwholes were wide and eaten and unusable. What a dilemma.

But I fixed my table last night. I bought some boards at Lowes (actually just one board that the nice man at Lowes cut for me into eight little boards), and then attached the legs to the boards. Then I attached the boards to the table. This engineering idea came from my brother, whose other engineering idea was to throw the stupid thing out. And my table stands again. It wobbles, and it's a lot higher than it used to be, but it stands and it works. In this course of this project, I got some splinters in my fingers, broke a 3/32 drill bit, and almost spoiled a gallon of milk (I forgot to put it away before I left to go buy screws). But I fixed my poor $15 table. And now it's my $20 table when I add the $4 for the boards and the $1 for the screws.

See? The value of this table has gone up already. And you were going to let me throw it out.

i'm here to win.

I was in the math building at 8:30 am on a Saturday to take a math test. Oh, and it was a voluntary math test. I wasn't even getting extra credit in any of my classes like some of the other kids who showed up. Before we started the test, we went around introducing ourselves and telling why we were here. Most were there for the extra credit. A couple, like me, were there more out of curiosity than anything else. Then there was this skinny sophomore kid, who shrugged his shoulders and said, "I'm here to win." The other kids looked aghast, and I laughed out loud at his audacity and arrogance, but thought, hey, if he's going to be full of himself, he might as well be honest about it.

The Putnam Math Exam is a Big Deal. Undergraduate students all over the country take it, and basically, if you make a positive score, that's considered really good. You're given a dozen problems and about six hours to work on them. You're not meant to finish them all. The hope is that you'll get far enough along on at least one of them to get partial credit. That's how you get a positive score. Whoever has the highest score is the winner. I don't know what the winner gets, maybe a scholarship to grad school or something like that. I wasn't there to win, so I don't know.

There were maybe a dozen kids there. For the test, they put each of us in a different classroom, and we were allowed to draw all over the chalk boards if that helped us think. I don't like using chalk boards. Give me a good sheet of scratch paper and I'm set. Plus, I ended up having to share a classroom anyway. The other guy in my classroom used the board a little for the morning session. He drew triangles. There was a triangle question on the test, so I assume he was working on that rather than just killing time with three-sided figures.

I was the only senior there. I knew only a couple of the other kids. During the half-hour lunch break, I mostly just listened to the others talk. I could tell that some of them were pretty smart and others not so much. I talked to Adam because he was the only guy I knew well. I like Adam. He has math tattoos. Plus, I think he was the only one besides me there who was of age.

After the morning session, we were all looking a little discouraged. The test is apparently designed to make you feel stupid. Most of us questioned how long we would even stay for the afternoon session - what was the point? Most of us weren't there to win. Adam joked that we should blow off the afternoon session and just walk to Murphy's and have some post-Putnam beers.

The afternoon session was a joke. No one cared anymore about this stupid impossible test. I made myself at least make an attempt on the afternoon questions. There was one that looked doable, at least more doable than the others. The other guy in my classroom gave up after about fifteen minutes. I thought I was getting somewhere on my problem, but then realized a kink. There were always kinks in these questions. I had spent the whole morning session feeling like I was getting somewhere and then finding a tiny kink that made the problem exponentially harder. Once I found the kink in the afternoon problem, I gave up. I didn't care. I wasn't there to win.

Security was much more lax in the afternoon. I peeked in the other classrooms to try to find Adam to see if that post-Putnam beer offer was still good. I found one of the other kids in his room, and they were discussing the problem I had just given up on. This was definitely not allowed, but I joined in since I had already given up. Adam wanted to finish the problem - he thought it looked doable, too. He and the other kid talked about it for a while while I watched. Adam started getting excited. Then I pointed out the kink. I had to explain it twice. Then Adam saw it, too, looked at me, and said, "Let's go to Murphy's." We didn't care. We weren't there to win.

talking about hypercards and the yellow beetle.

Driving back from Mario's, an old yellow Beetle pulled out in front of Rob's black Civic. We all cursed him mildly before returning to talking about hypercards. Actually, Rob talked about hypercards. Dave and I listened because we didn't know what they were. I'm still not sure. As it happened, we ended up behind the yellow Beetle at the next stoplight.

We were still talking about hypercards when we interrupted ourselves to talk about the guy in the yellow Beetle again. He was dancing, and he was doing it like no one was watching. His head was bouncing back and forth and all over the driver seat of that yellow Beetle. Whenever we happened to catch a shot of his profile, we saw him singing, his mouth wide open.

Amused, I started imitating him. I bounced back and forth and all over the passenger seat of that black Civic. I think our dancer saw me in his rearview mirror, because he became even more animated. Apparently he dances even when someone is watching. He began to point back and forth a la Saturday Night Fever. Then he somehow managed to jump while in the car, causing that old yellow Beetle to shake dangerously when he landed. It was awesome. We were fascinated. I wanted to know what he was listening to. Dave wanted to know what he was on. Rob wanted to just follow him around town.

The light changed, and when the yellow Beetle made a right turn, the black Civic kept straight. I wish we had followed him to see where he went and just watch him groove; instead, we went back to talking about hypercards.

well-informed beggers.

I don't know whether to be scared or amused by the people who sell newspapers on the medians of busy intersections. I say people out of a habit of political correctness; the only ones I've ever seen are men. The first couple of times I saw them, I thought they were beggers. Then I noticed that instead of displaying a poorly-spelled plea for help, they displayed the days headlines instead. Maybe they're just well-informed beggers.

The one I see most often is the black guy who works the intersection of the off-ramp from Silas Creek Parkway South and Stratford Road. He keeps a stool and extra papers sitting near the intersection, but he wanders farther back to peddle to the line of stopped cars. He carries a cane, and his right foot bends inward at an unnatural angle that I don't like to look at too closely. I can't hear what he yells, but he holds up his left index finger. I assume he means that newspapers are a dollar, rather than other possible interpretations of the gesture, like "Wake Forest is #1," "Turn to the Lord," or "Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!"

I've never bought a paper from him, or any other of the vendors like him. If I wanted to read the Winston-Salem Journal, I would have bought a subscription when they called my house. But people do buy their papers this way. Seems like every morning I take that off-ramp, someone is holding a buck out the window. It's a good corner to work - my route is the same as a lot of business-types who live in the suburbs. Plus, the light is long, giving him a lot of time to hobble along our right sides, pointing upwards.

I assume these people are hired by the newspaper, rather than them just being independent entrepreneurs who buy a stack of papers to sell for an increased fee. I'm not even sure if they work on commission, because though my guy works his corner pretty hard, others stand still at the front of the intersection, not really giving anyone behind the first few cars a chance to make a purchase. Bad business.

And that makes me like the fella who works the off-ramp. He's got a bum foot, but if he's gonna sell papers, well then he's gonna sell papers. Maybe the newspaper even assigns the corners. Maybe he got such a good corner because he earned it by being so enthusiastic about such a crappy job.

In any case, I will likely never buy a paper from him. But I'm glad he's on my route to work. Even though I'm currently on the bottom of the pecking order and only doing grunt work right now, if he can be happy selling copies of the Winston-Salem Journal on the corner of the off-ramp of Silas Creek Parkway South and Stratford Road, then I can be happy building program installs.

peruvian cotton polo shirts from lands' end

I don't do much here yet. I'm training to do a specific thing, and that thing doesn't have to be done all the time, so the training is slow without examples. So I have a lot of down-time to basically spend reading. It's not as exciting as it sounds - my choice of reading materials consists of the InstallShield Manual and C# For Experienced Programmers. Sometimes I play with code, making up programs when I get tired of reading about them.

I'm the Install Girl, the Build Master. I don't write programs yet. I build the programs that install the programs that other people write. Just today, something I built was burned to a disc and mailed to a customer. I felt proud. I don't even know what the program was. Something to do with forklifts.

I like the company. They let me in and gave me my own office, a company polo shirt, and a coffee mug, which I use for my afternoon tea. I had to bring my own half and half (not fat-free) for my afternoon tea, but they let me keep it in the company fridge, and no one uses it but me. And my company polo shirt is from Lands' End, made from Peruvian cotton, and has the company logo embroidered on it. I think company polo shirts from Lands' End is the mark of a good place to work. They've also ordered me some business cards and a nameplate for my office door so that I can take down the one that says "COAT CLOSET." Just kidding - a company that gives its employees Peruvian cotton polo shirts from Lands' End would never do that.

waking up is hard to do.

As slack as I have been lately, I wasn't even going to write tonight. But then I came up with that title, and I took it as a sign.

I've always been a frequent user of the snooze button. And I've discovered that grown-ups have to get up so early. True, my office allows me to come in as late as 10 am, but I've been told that I should make a good impression by coming in early the first couple of months. Then, once it's established that I'm a good worker, I can be not a good worker.

The goal is to be there at 8 am. It hasn't happened yet. And I usually go to bed before 11 at night. I just have a hard time getting up in the morning. I don't think clearly that early, and I make some great excuses while my hand is traveling to the snooze button. I don't have to be in early. I won't shower. I'll wear the same thing I wore yesterday. Depending on what kind of dream I was having at the moment my alarm went off, sometimes the excuses don't even make sense. Sometimes I have no idea if I'm delaying the next alarm or, say, the next shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. In any case, soon it's 7:27, and I really have to get up.

I could set my clothes out the night before. It wouldn't help. I could shower in the evenings, but then my hair would look ridiculous. I could go to bed earlier. Wouldn't help. I could set my clock fast - that will help. And I could prep the coffee machine.

This evening, I went ahead and got the coffee maker ready for tomorrow morning. I put 4 cups of water and a clean filter filled with freshly-ground coffee in. I figure that'll save me a good five minutes when I only have to push a button to start the coffee.

I just hope that I don't remember that I prepped the coffee tomorrow morning. I'll just use it as another excuse to sleep in.

such a lonely word.

I am a big fan of honesty. No, not the Billy Joel song, thought it's not bad. I mean the concept of not being a big liar. I know some big liars, and their lack of honesty is my least favorite thing about them. And I know some very honest people, and their honesty is one of my favorite things about them. My philosophy is to give me the truth, because I can handle it. And if it turns out that I can't, well, then it's my own fault for asking for it.

Casey is a very honest person. When he tells me something, I believe him unconditionally. If I want to know something, I ask him, he tells me, I trust him, and that's that. I love that I can do that with him.

All this leads up to going shopping with my beloved the other day. I found a pair of pants, lovely blue ones on sale for ten bucks. I went into the dressing room to try them on, and I found them to be questionable. They didn't fit so well or so badly that I immediately knew whether or not to buy them. So I poked my head outside to ask Casey's opinion on them. He said, "They're not very flattering."

Did I say I was a fan of honesty? I didn't mean it.

It's true, I asked for his opinion, and I would have wanted him to give me his true opinion. And if someone had asked me what I didn't like about the pants, I would have said, "Well, they're maybe not as flattering as I would like." I would have used the exact word that he used. So why is this any different? Why did my eyes widen in an expression of extreme injury when he gave his verdict on the pants?

I dunno, it's just different. In the world of relationships, there is an understanding that all pants are flattering, girlfriends are not fat, and size does not matter. And it wasn't that I disagreed with his assessment of the pants and the way they looked on me, I was just shocked to hear him say it. Apparently, love isn't so blind after all. Not only can it see, love thinks I look fat in those pants.

It's okay, really. I'm ready to joke about it, which he will say means that I'm not over it at all (That's not an unfair assumption; jokes mean many different things in my world). I asked for the truth, and it turns out I can handle it. Maybe next time I should ask for tact, too.

Needless to say, I did not get the pants. I never would have been able to put them on without thinking about how unflattering they were. And maybe next time, I'll just go shopping with my big fat liar friends.